Images of the Mysteries of the Christian Faith

“We give thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“Baptized into Christ’s Kingdom”

We are subjects of two kingdoms. We are subjects of Christ our King and citizens of these United States, or whatever country you hail from. How we live our lives in this green land of America is both informed by our Heavenly King and will influence our life in the hereafter. Also, our life under Christ our King informs our citizenship here on earth in this great country of ours.

Now the kingdom of this world is not simply the domain of Satan, even though St. Paul does call it “the power of darkness”. The kingdom of this world is that broken part of Creation, of the cosmos, that does not claim Christ as Lord. Whereas we like to think that the saving work of Christ in the cosmos is expanding, in our own culture we see little evidence of it. Think for instance of thirty-five years ago, when the popular television series M*A*S*H sympathetically depicted a chaplain amongst its characters. Such a thing is foreign to television today.

Indeed, university students are increasingly told that their faith holds no bearing – or only poses a burden – on their education, when the original universities were explicitly Christian. Unelected judges overturn same-sex marriage bans and abortion restrictions partially on the claim of there being no reasonable or non-sectarian basis for them. In several states of this Union, courts and legislatures require citizens taking out any insurance plan to pay for elective abortions, regardless of their consciences, even though it is simply avoided.

But despite all this and the recent news out of Houston with sermons being demanded of preachers, other governments in the kingdom of this world have had it much worse. This Wednesday we celebrate the Feast of the Martyrs of Uganda, the dozens of Anglican and Roman Catholic boys who were the sex slaves of the pagan king of Uganda and refused his lustful desires. For their disobedience to the king of this world and their obedience to the High King of Heaven, they were put to death. Earlier, the king had grown angry with the missionaries from the Church of England and the Church of Rome as they kept criticizing him and his support of Moslem missionaries.

This past week in Morning Prayer, we read in First Kings about Elijah, Ahab, and Jezebel, how the righteous prophet squared off against the wicked monarchs of Israel. But before Elijah, Samuel warned Israel against having an earthly king, warning them in I Samuel viii.18: “And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.”

Worldly governments clearly fail to set out a righteous course for us to live in. But the government of Christ the King exemplifies all good and glorious things. Our worldly governments tell us that things which are clearly wrong are right; the government of Christ the King unerringly tells us what the wrong things are with such accuracy and precision that we cannot actually avoid them perfectly.

Today’s Epistle mentions “the inheritance of the saints in light”. This refers to the Kingdom of God. In the next verse, “the power of darkness” is the antithesis of the Kingdom.

“And he is the head of the body, the church:” Coming right after speaking of “all things” and spiritual beings, this shows that the last verses here, vv 18-20, demonstrate an equivalency between the cosmos and the Church. This is tied to the universal mission of Holy Church, to bring all people to Christ and His kingdom. The work of the Church is Christ’s salvific work in the whole broken cosmos. Later in ii.10, Christ is called the “head of every rule and authority”. Christ created all and rules all, and we are members of His Body in that cosmos and Holy Church. Each one of us is part of something epic and big.

Now, there is one way into Christ’s Kingdom: Holy Baptism. We read in St. John iii.5, “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” This is our passport, our entrance; this is how we immigrate from the kingdom of the world to the kingdom of God. When we are buried with Christ and then share in His Resurrection, we join with Him mystically and sacramentally. When Christ commands His disciples at the end of St. Matthew’s Gospel, He says,

“All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”

Before we are Augustans, Georgians, or Americans, before we are black, white, or any other race of this world, before all these things, we are under the banner of Christ our King. By virtue of our supernatural sacramental Baptism into the life and death of Christ our Lord, we are brothers and sisters of the Nigerian schoolgirl held in some African camp more fully than we are brothers and sisters to our natural sister who does not believe. By virtue of our belief in Christ our King, we are brothers and sisters of the impoverished but faithful Haitian farmer more than we are brothers and sisters to our unbaptized brother with whom we grew up.

So what does this new citizenship look like? We read in Ephesians v.1-5:

“Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour. But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints; Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks. For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.”

First, we must walk in sacrificial loving-kindness. We must love the Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our soul, and with all our minds, and we must love our neighbors as ourselves. This is unbelievably difficult, but we have no alternative. God is love, and we are to conform ourselves to God.

Second, we are very specifically told to avoid wicked behavior. After all, Christ says, “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” So we are to avoid fornication, uncleanness, covetousness, filthiness, foolish talking, jesting. We are not to be whoremongers, unclean, covetous, or idolaters. Essentially, we are to pay attention and keep the Ten Commandments.

We are to love and we are to keep moral lives. Third, we are to give thanks. It is no mistake that each of our regular services in our Book of Common Prayer includes a prayer of thanksgiving. We are to thank God for the goodness in our lives. We are to thank God for our lives, God himself, other people, and all the goodness of God. Love without thanks is hardly love indeed.

Today’s Epistle begins, “Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:”

Moving from darkness into light reminds the Christian soul of the Exodus, especially the miraculous passage through the Red Sea. While Moses his prophet stretched out his hand, the Lord caused the wind to blow on the sea, exposing the seabed so that the people of Israel could escape from Pharaoh and his army, freeing them to reach the Holy Land. So likewise, we are in bondage to sin and death in the kingdom of this world, no matter how fine it is otherwise to us. And God brings us out of “from the power of darkness”. Through the miracle of Christ’s death and Resurrection, we transfer from one side to the other.

Having passed from the old way of death to the new way of life, Christ having given us the forgiveness of sins, so we are to imitate our God and King.

The way we worship is to obey. And we become like Christ. When the early Church worshipped Christ their God, they became more and more like Christ, and they grew like wildfire. The early Christians did not visit and attend congregations to find out which ones were the most like what they wanted, asking to make the service the way they wanted, requiring the teaching to be like they wanted. In all things, they obeyed Holy Church, they obeyed their Lord and Savior, they became like Him as disciples, and they grew and spread. This is the way not only of faithfulness to God, not only of resisting the sinfulness of the world, but is also the way of evangelism, growth, and maturity.

Almost like the Anglo-Saxons of Wessex over eleven hundred years ago, our king is our best man, the man who exemplifies our ideals, the man whom we seek to emulate. Blessed Alfred the Great, King of Wessex was one such king of this world; Christ, the King of Heaven and Earth, is the king of the whole cosmos and of the whole Church.

With God, we know who is king. We know that His rule is always right and holy. We know that we have no say in His rule. And indeed, while God wants our whole selves, our souls and bodies, we actually live in great freedom, freedom from sin, death, and Hell.

God the Father calls us to live our lives in the service of Christ our King. We are to live meek, humble lives in penitence and holiness, avoiding sin, and loving our God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves.

“We give thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“WATCH thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“The work of the evangelist”

Why do we sing the Gospel during the Mass? Why do we stand when it is proclaimed? Why do we sometimes process the Gospel out amongst the congregation to proclaim it? Why must the Gospeller be in Holy Orders?

We read in Isaiah lii.7: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!”

Beautiful feet? That sounds over the top. Yet over-the-top is how we proclaim the Gospel both here at St. Luke’s and in catholic churches around the world throughout the ages.

St. Luke’s Gospel tells the story of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, from before His Annunciation till His Ascension into Heaven. His is the Greatest Story Ever Told, and our patron saint, St. Luke the Evangelist, is one of the sacred four who told the story so that the rest of us might hear it.

The patron saint of our parish wrote almost as much of the New Testament as Saint Paul. He is the only Gentile who wrote one of our Gospels. According to Colossians iv.14, we know that he was a physician. As a doctor and writer of a Gospel, he is considered the patron saint of doctors and healers. His sign as evangelist is the ox with wings, giving us the name of our newsletter, the Winged Bull.

He is also the patron saint of artists. During the Middle Ages, many Guilds of St. Luke encouraged and defended artists in important cities in Rome, Flanders, and across Europe. Here at our parish, our Creative Christians group continues this tradition by encouraging both Christian art and Christian artists.

But St. Luke did not only write a Gospel leaving us inspired depictions of the life of the Blessed Mother, our Lord Christ, and the early Church. St. Luke also did the work of an evangelist by journeying with St. Paul on at least two of his mission trips, staying with him in Rome. Our patron is counted among the Seventy who Christ commissioned and sent out to do ministry in today’s Gospel lesson.

St. Luke wrote his Gospel in Greek, helping spread the Good News of Christ throughout the pagan Gentile world of the First Century. The Early Church suffered greatly for proclaiming the Gospel. St. Paul and all the Apostles save St. John met their Lord in the martyr’s death.

And lest we think that the persecution of Christians is a bygone practice, this Wednesday we celebrate the faithful Christian witness of eight Anglican clergymen whom the Japanese killed for preaching the Gospel in occupied New Guinea during World War II. Tens of thousands of priests and millions of faithful Christians died at the hands of the Communists in Russia and elsewhere in the Twentieth Century. The Moslems have killed far more over the centuries, and they are still at it today.

Closer to home, we hear rumblings of persecution. I warned in my annual report last year of coming troubles. As St. Peter writes in his first epistle, “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:”

This week, news came out of Houston, Texas which has troubled the hearts and minds of many Christians. Let us look into what the facts are:

The city council and mayor of Houston passed an ordinance which would permit women to use men’s bathrooms and men women’s bathrooms and allowing people to file complaints with the city government if they are not allowed to use the bathroom they want.

Houston preachers and others organized a petition for a referendum to overturn the ordinance at the November election. The city government claimed that too many of the signatures were not valid and refused to schedule the vote. Christian activists then sued the city to accept the signatures and thus the petition and put the ordinance to the vote.

In response, the city’s lawyers issued subpoenas to five conservative preachers to hand over sermons to determine of any preaching related to homosexuality, so-called gender identity, or even the mayor. A subpoena is a legal writ compelling someone to appear before court or to surrender documents to the court. These preachers would now have to surrender to a law court any sermon mentioning any of these topics.

The mayor has asked if the preachers gave instructions on how to sign the petition. The city attorneys hold that the subpoenas are valid because the preachers worked to organize the repeal petition and are thus pertinent to the case.

Both conservative and liberal ministers have spoken out against the subpoenas. There has been a public outcry over the city’s actions. An interdenominational coalition of over 400 churches in Houston have opposed these subpoenas. This local action has sparked national debate. Some pastors have refused to hand over sermons.

The mayor and city attorney then agreed that the original subpoenas were too broad. New subpoenas have now been drawn up which do not ask for sermons, but rather for speeches and presentations, and do not ask about homosexuality, but still ask for other things besides those on the petition.

You may ask what a conservative pastor’s PowerPoint presentation on the ordinance has to do with the validity of the signatures on the petition. The answer is: Nothing. The city’s attorneys are still reaching beyond the appropriate legal necessity at hand, which has the effect of threatening the free speech of the preachers and the public practice of religion by the ministers of Christians.

A Christian – or another religion’s – minister preaching, speechifying, or presenting on the sexual nature of God’s Creation and on the divinely ordained morality which faithful people must practice are not crimes, do not threaten the state, and indeed support the wholesomeness, integrity, and the commonweal of the people.

The representatives of free American citizens are not called to sift through the words of religious leaders, looking for sedition. The city is not a political organization which cannot tolerate dissent. The governmental structures of this world have no legitimate role in approving or disapproving the voice of the Bride of Christ. Our American governments have no legitimate role in intimidating preachers or believers.

We Continuing Anglicans directly descend from those who were quickened with zeal by the Assize Day Sermon by Blessed John Keble at St. Mary’s Church in Oxford, in which he publicly from the University Pulpit criticized the Whig-controlled Parliament for reducing the number of bishops in Ireland without the approval of the Church of Ireland. As your priest and rector, I stand in a very long line of bishops and priests who have criticized the state when the state has had the worldly effrontery to admonish and attempt to control Holy Mother Church.

This very day last year, Archbishop Haverland sat right there and in the words of our Book of Common Prayer challenged me “faithfully to feed that portion of the flock of Christ which is now intrusted to you; not as a man-pleaser, but as continually bearing in mind that you are accountable to us here, and to the Chief Bishop and Sovereign Judge of all, hereafter.”

It would certainly please many people if we decided that we would ignore the things of God and whole-hearted accept the things of man. But that would be forsaking God by making us pleasing to men, and I have been told not to be a “man-pleaser”.

My wife once saw a person wearing button which answered an unasked naughty question with “No thanks, I’d rather go to heaven.” We lives our lives in this world, oftentimes forgetting that our lives are given to us by our good God in Heaven. We may choose to do many things. But we will be called to divine judgement one day. All choices are not the same. Some are right, and some are wrong. When we are enticed, seduced, and tempted to make a wrong choice, it is good for us to say, “No thanks, I’d rather go to Heaven.”

I know you. I know that most of you won’t budge if this Houston business happened here. You know me. You know that I won’t budge if this happened here. We know our archbishop. We know that he won’t budge if this happened here.

And this hasn’t happened here in Augusta. Indeed, we elected a preacher of the Gospel as our mayor. But this has now happened in these United States. My dear children of God, I would rather you live your lives in peace, but I tell you this day that we will soon be facing worse, and not just in Texas, but here on the banks of the Savannah River. Our sister parish across the river, All Saints’, Aiken, witnesses to the Gospel in a state where a Federal court might force their county to issue marriage licenses to people of the same sex. Dark days are coming.

We here at St. Luke’s will continue to preach the Gospel of Christ our Lord, especially to those who need to hear it. Many stories are told of the old Roman martyrs, some of whom are named in our Mass, who witnessed to their tormenters and executioners to great effect, converting souls in the Holy Name of Jesus.

If anyone in this world wants to know what I preach, come here to St. Luke’s most any Sunday at 10:30 and hear for himself. I even put my sermons up on a webpage. I would love for everyone out there to hear me preach about our Lord and Savior!

The government can hear our public proclamation. Those who try to order us about and deny us our freedom both to practice and proclaim the True Religion of Christ are the ones who need to hear it the most. We shall not back down. St. Luke our patron did not back down. St. Paul did not back down. Fr. Keble did not back down, and neither did the faithful gathered together at the Congress of St. Louis in 1977.

We at St. Luke Church are uniquely positioned to proclaim the Holy Gospel to souls in peril here in Augusta as the times grow darker. We preach the unadulterated truth, the whole Gospel, all the Sacraments, without Roman and Eastern doctrinal accretions, and we do so in the traditional language of this nation.

Everything St. Luke wrote was to tell other souls about Christ. He commended Christ to everyone at all times. He wrote down timeless truths about our Lord that the other Evangelists did not record. When we stand under the name of the Evangelist St. Luke, we stand for spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And like St. Luke, we are not only to sit down and tell other people about Christ, but we are to get up and tell people face to face, traveling to them to share the good news of Christ our Lord.

After St. Paul says in today’s epistle, “WATCH thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry”, he continues and says “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.”

The day is coming when we will have to answer for our faith in Christ. That day may come when we draw our last breath and slip beyond the veil of this mortal life, when we will face the individual judgement. Jesus will look at each of us and know what we have done with the life He suffered and died to save, that life which the Holy Ghost bestowed with graces.

Or the day is coming when someone out there will make us chose to follow the world or to follow Christ. Maybe someone will try to seduce you into sexual sin. Maybe a crook will tempt you to help him commit a crime. Maybe your own elected government will coerce you to deny Christ and follow the popular godless way.

Will you stay the course and profess your faith in Christ when your livelihood and social standing are threatened? Will you stay the course and profess your faith in Christ when your life is required of you? What will you say when they come to coerce you to renounce your faith? Are you able to say that today?

“WATCH thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. “

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“Life in Unity with God”

Today’s Epistle moves the argument from the unity of Jews and Gentiles in Christ to a strong exhortation on Christian ethics. These six verses combine a plea for Christian unity with the theological foundations of Christian unity. So we are here looking at the highest ideals of Christ’s Body, the Church.

1 I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,

The first verse begins with three items: St. Paul as prisoner, walking worthy, and the subject of vocation or being called. St. Paul cannot be with the Ephesians because he is currently held prisoner, and this gives him a moral edge. He is suffering for the Faith, and so he has a right to speak with authority. He is not ashamed to assert this authority.

The phrase “walk worthy” shows that this life is not to be talked about but lived out. We actively walk our Christian life, actively engaging in this world and in our common life together. The use of vocation comes from the Latin, “to call”, which we aptly capture in our word, “calling”. A calling and a vocation are the same. And the Christian walk is a result of being called by our Lord into that life.

2 With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;

St. Paul here lists three virtues as key to the Christian walk to which we have been called to by our Lord: Lowliness and meekness, longsuffering, and forbearing one another in love. Also recounted in Colossians iii.12-13, these virtues let us live together in unity with God, unity which has already been proven to transcend the differences of Jew and Greek. These virtues are the foundation of God’s holy plan for our individual lives, our lives together in Christ, and the life of the entire redeemed cosmos, or created order. The harmony amongst Christians is the first-fruits of the universal harmony of the whole cosmos in Christ our Lord, heralded in the Revelation of St. John.

First, lowliness and meekness are humility – not haughtiness of spirit and self-assertion. We are not to vaunt ourselves over others. We are to take our place and do what we are called to do without assuming we know better and pushing others aside so that we may do better. Our rota system of coffee hour, wherein a Sunday is assigned to the willing who has authority over refreshments after Mass for that day, gives us each an opportunity to thrive in serving others while not crowing about our superiority and not pushing others aside so that we may have our turn. Each of us who volunteers for this ministry has a turn, and no one may add to and change that turn without that party’s permission. We each get to serve others as well as we can without strutting or pushing.

Second, long-suffering is a better translation of makrothumia than patience, because it not only means enduring provocations but refusing to give up hope for improved relations. Patience can give the sense of only suffering for a while until the problem goes away. Long-suffering, as here written by St. Paul in the Scriptures, shows that the end result is good, holy, and right relations between brethren and the firm practice of hope as that holy result is worked out.

Christians don’t just give up and walk away from difficult relationships. Christians dig deep and love like Christ loves until a good relationship flourishes. Long-suffering means that we must not only endure but change into the image of Christ so that we may grow in loving-kindness.

Third, forbearing one another in love is the culmination of these three holy virtues with which we live out our high calling. We do not simply shrivel up so that others may flourish around us; instead, we live boldly in Christ-like loving-kindness, forgiving those who sin against us while striving with all our might not to sin against others, thereby building up godly relationships with our brother and with our neighbor, just as Christ commanded us in His holy Gospel, St. John xiii:34, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”

3 Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

“Endeavouring” can also be translated, “taking pains” – that is, a great striving and work of the whole self. This involves initiative, not waiting around for someone else to start working. This is attached to the calling, our vocation in God.

St. Paul has previously mentioned in Ephesians i.10, “That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:” This is the end to which we are heading. This is that “unity of Spirit” which Christ has in store for us and for the entire cosmos. Any impairment we suffer with regards to unity is an impairment of the whole world.

By our failure to love one another as Christ loves us, we fail to live out the Eschaton, the holy end to all times which Christ has been bringing us. We work against Christ when we hold grudges, when we vaunt ourselves in front of others, when we work to silence others, when we work to politic our way into getting our peculiar lovely thing accepted by the group. All those things are not even worthy of secular societies.

Keeping the “unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”: We have unity in the Holy Ghost; we must work and strive manfully to maintain, to keep this unity. Our unity together as members of one Body is an act of God, not an act of man or great work by the Christian community.

And what is “the bond of peace” more than loving-kindness? In Colossians iii.14, which echoes this verse, the bond is love. Peace is the bond, the glue, the structure which holds together this Christian community of loving-kindness. These are certainly not the bonds in which St. Paul was being kept.

The “unity of the Spirit” is the “unity which the Spirit creates”. It is both inward and outward unity which Christians most especially are to exhibit. We must have real inward unity of hearts and love, but we must also have true outward unity of lack of external divisions.

The next three verses get poetic and are thought to be related to a Baptismal liturgy. The ethics of the first three verses blossom into the confession and worship of the latter three verses.

In the Old Testament, we read the Shema of Deuteronomy vi.4, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:” This evolves some by Zechariah xvi.9, “And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one.”

St. Paul elaborates this in I Corinthians xii.12-13: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. 13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.”

So: “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”

4 There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;

This one hope of our calling is the actual work of hope and not just a general disposition to hopefulness. This work of hope of our vocation is granted to both Jew and Gentile and is tied in unity in the Holy Ghost.

5 One Lord, one faith, one baptism,

“One Lord” reminded both the Jews and Gentiles that they have but one lord, and this when there were many little lords abounding. Ephesians opens in i.21 with the triumph of Christ over all other lords, both worldly and otherworldly.

“One faith” reminds us that there are not several faiths, but one faith, faith in Christ Jesus, the catholic and apostolic faith, the orthodox faith, eschewing all heretical and heterodox faiths.

“One Baptism” reminds all Christians that there is only one way into the Christian life – Baptism into the life and death of Christ our Lord. Indeed, St. Paul mentions Holy Baptism in Ephesians five other times. This poetry sounds like something said at a Baptism, perhaps even an early liturgy.

St. Paul does not bring to mind Baptism in vain. Each recollection of baptism brings to mind and encourages the faithful to steadfastly continue walking the Christian walk in their behavior as well as their words. The ethical challenges of the first three verses naturally bring themselves to the Baptismal language of these last three verses.

6 One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

The Greeks loved to play with prepositions, and this is what St. Paul does here. The “above all” shows transcendence, or how God the Father is beyond the cosmos. The “through all” shows omnipresence, or how God the Father is present everywhere at all times. The “in you all” shows immanence, or how close God the Father is to you everywhere.

We are given a poetic and theological vision of the things of God along with the virtues necessary to reach it and experience it in our own lives. The ideal Christian walk is made manifest in our lives through the love of God and the practice of the holy virtues necessary to our life together: Lowliness and meekness, longsuffering, and forbearing one another in love. Let us remember our Baptism, even with holy water when we enter the nave for Mass, and recall that our life is lived with God when it is lived with one another in the unity of the Holy Ghost.

“There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“Church: Hospital or Hospice?”

There are no people who are to be unwelcome here! No one here has ever told me to make this a hoity-toity society parish, but many people have placed little limits here and there about making sure the riff-raff is kept out. But we are the riff-raff in the eyes of God! And the truth in the eyes of the eternal and Almighty God is actually true, unlike our notions of polite society which are here today and gone with the wind tomorrow.

We have need of physicians of the soul for we are sinners. When Christ sat at dinner to eat with St. Matthew and the other tax collectors, he sat with men who were known to take bribes, work for the Roman occupying force, and wring as much as they could out of the population. When the self-righteous Pharisees complained about that, Christ told them, “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” The Body of Christ is to be a hospital for repentance and healing and not a club for the redeemed.

We are sinners. St. Paul says in Romans iii.23, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” We are not to be only treating our pain but undergoing spiritual healing. We can never think first of the pain. Who would ever set a broken bone if we only thought of the pain? Who would take months of chemotherapy if we only thought of the pain? We have amongst this parish survivors of cancer who have undergone very difficult treatment. I for one am glad that they – y’all – underwent such painful treatment, for I would rather you be with us than not.

If we are doing the Lord’s work, we can welcome the criticisms of our enemies because they give us the opportunity to explain ourselves and what we are doing. The criticisms of the Pharisees allow Christ to explain the hospital concept. He isn’t just hanging out; He is doing the work of God with actual people, people like you and me.

Christians are to follow Christ in allowing everyone to come in to the community before we expect righteousness of them. Anyone with a soul is welcome. We do have standards of conduct, such as repenting of sin, receiving Holy Communion, and fasting, but these standards are for those who are already members, not standards to obey before you come to know Christ. Thus it is that we are a hospital for sinners. Faith comes before righteous living. Our modified behavior is our response to the great goodness given to us by Christ our Lord.

“Follow me” is the shortest, simplest, and most succinct call to Christian discipleship. To follow Christ is to live in His manner of life. We follow those upon whom we model ourselves. “Follow me” implies personal loyalty. Christ is not trying to get people to follow His set of rules or His philosophy but rather His Holy Person. Our faith is one of loving-kindness between persons. For instance, I am the husband of Angela, and Angela is the wife of me. I said that I took her as my wife, and she said she took me, bless her heart, as her husband. We did not become something complex like cult members or philosophers or disembodied talking heads when we married; we married each other.

Likewise, Christ is not trying to sell something here. We follow Him. This is why we are not people of a book like Jews and Mohammedans. We follow Christ – we are Christians. We are people in a personal relationship with our Lord and Master. This is why Apostolic Succession is so important – our faith is transmitted from mouth to ear and heart to heart. You cannot truly read yourself into the Christian Faith. Reading theology is not the basis of Christian ministry. Love between members of the household of God is. I am your spiritual father, and you are my spiritual children. And so on.

Buying your child or grandchild a Bible is no substitute for attending Mass with her. It is more important for him to hear you answer the question in person than to have him look up the answer for himself. Even though we fail as leaders to our children and priests fail as leaders to our people, this way of communicating between persons is the fundamental way of learning about Christ. Getting embarrassed about speaking religion to each other is part of our relationship with each other.

Christ is Himself the answer to sin, sickness, and death. Christ is a bold one, for He is the Incarnate Son of God made flesh down here on earth to save us from sin, sickness, and death. Christ is both the messenger and the cure. Christ is both the priest and the victim. Christ is both God and Man. Our connection with God, our source of ultimate healing is found in that singular human person, that ancient Jew. Christ is entirely God and entirely human and yet is but one single Person, the Holy Person whose Name

is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians ii.9b-11)

St. Matthew found the “pearl of great price”, and nothing in this world could compare with the Man Who found Him. So, like the others fishing in their boats, the Evangelist and Apostle dropped what he was doing without a care of what might befall him to follow the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
A hospice is a place where you go to die. The folks who work with hospice do not allow any fighting to save your life. They want you to die peacefully and with as little pain as possible. A hospice is not a place to go in order to heal. One is supposed to be carried out of a hospice.

A hospital is a place where you go to heal. One goes to a hospital in order to get back on your feet and eventually leave under your own power, even if they insist on the wheelchair ride to the front door or to your car.

I have had a season-long clinical pastoral education internship at a hospital in Illinois and a year-long CPE residency at a hospital in South Carolina. One of my problems in these hospitals is that the spiritual care, the pastoral care provided seemed to be of a palliative nature.

According to getpalliativecare.org, palliative care “focuses on providing patients with relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress of a serious illness—whatever the diagnosis.” Palliative care makes the physical, social, mental, and emotional burdens of being sick more bearable. It does not attempt to cure the ailment.

I confess that I am not a big fan of palliative care. I have a painful chronic illness, and I would much rather receive a therapy which gets me healed up and on my way. Instead, the medicine I take helps me tolerate the burden of being sick. I am thankful for this care and medication, for it allows me to do more than I was able to do before I took the medicine.

But, I much prefer therapy that improves my condition. One of the reasons I felt so called to amend my life and trust in Christ was that I saw someone live a better and holier life that I did. Forgive me if you heard my story, but some fellows and I worked together in Atlanta many years ago. We were smart-alecs, jerks, clever boys with a turn of phrase who thought that we were hilarious.

One of the ladies were worked with seemed like a silly girl. She dressed funny and talked funny, and we made fun of her. I’m sure it wasn’t fun to her. But here’s the kicker – she always treated us with decency and respect. She was a follower of Christ in that she actually walked with the Son of God and treated other people with the love with which Christ loved her.

Confronted with genuine Christian loving-kindness, I stood convicted of my sins. I underwent the painful realization that my life of disrespect was not worth living. I wanted to love other people and myself the way she loved me and the way Christ loved her. I came back home to church and repented of my sins. I am honored to tell you here today that in the last few weeks of my father’s life he saw this son of his come back into the Christian walk that he had taught me to walk in.

Here I stand twenty-five years later a changed man. I am not as good a man as I hope to be someday, but I can safely say that I am a better man. Angela has known me long enough to attest to the fact that I am a better man today than when she first met me.

But here is the thing about palliative care: If I had not felt that pain of public humiliation realizing that I treated others poorly, I can’t see as how I would have repented from my sins. The pain I felt was a good thing. It taught me, it schooled me that I was on a road to damnation. I knew my life was out of order when I felt that pain. I thank God Almighty sitting in Heaven above that I was not provided palliative spiritual care, Christian ministration that got the pain to stop.

That pain was good for me. I went to the hospital of Christ’s church to get spiritual healing. If I had been taken to a spiritual hospice, I would have been told that I was good enough just the way I was and that I did not need to change.

My dear children, Christ sat at table full of sinners so that He could redeem them. Our parish here is named after the most famous physician of Holy Scripture, St. Luke. Jesus Christ has established His Bride, Holy Church, here on earth to help save sinners. We sit here on Wheeler Road so that we may do the work of Christ and be a place of spiritual healing.

That means that we will hurt. We will hurt from our own sins. And Christ wants us to hurt from our sins. We are not to cover over our sins and adopt pseudo-therapies that reduce our suffering. No! We must suffer fully. We must feel our hurt so that we may correct our lives! We must let our brothers and sisters who are members of Christ’s Body feel their hurt so that they may amend their lives. We spiritually injure our fellow members of Christ’s Church when we try to take away their suffering before the time is over.

That means that others will hurt. We are a hospital for sinners. When we welcome people who suffer the pains of this fallen world through their own fault, the fault of others, and the assaults of the Devil, we must take them in and bandage them up like the Good Samaritan did. We must suffer with them – that is what the word compassion means: To suffer with.

We must embrace the pain of this world and let folks know that they can come here for spiritual healing.

This parish holds together two different notions of what a parish ought to be. For on the one hand, we know each other well, we are friends with each other, we seek out others who will serve what we have already established as members of this parish, and we seek out others who will keep our parish family going. This is a cozy, comfortable, and unfruitful way of conducting ourselves.

But on the other hand, we are a mission outpost of the right bank on the Savannah River. All Saints’, Aiken has the left bank. This is our duty station, and from here we are to fulfill the Great Commission given to the Apostles and thus to our bishops – “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

We are both a family and a mission outpost. As a parish family, we show some of the domestic loving-kindness made possible in Christ our Lord. But we are also tempted towards living out the Christian life in this parish as a hospice, avoiding pain, keeping peace, and not rocking the boat.

As a mission outpost, we focus on preaching the Gospel and loving our neighbor as ourselves. Thus we are tempted towards living out the Christian life in this parish as a hospital, dragging in the wounded off the street, binding their wounds, and loving them, encouraging those who have fallen, strengthening those who are weak, and occasionally sending on their way those who simply stopped by for a rest.

Discerning correctly and loving appropriately is the principal challenge for us here at St. Luke Church as we grow into the future.

“They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“…If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“Trusting in Christ”

We are all under sin; not one of us can save himself from everlasting death. Only by faith in Christ are we saved.

We cannot earn our salvation. We cannot become righteous before God by following the Law of Moses. Following the Ten Commandments does not make us righteous before God. Following the Six Duties of Churchmen does not make us righteous before God. The Law and all such plans teach us how far short we fall from where we ought to be.

This helps us open up ourselves to God. The spiritual truth that we can do nothing to earn our salvation is difficult to hear. People listening to Christ preach found it difficult to hear; we sitting here at St. Luke Church find it difficult to hear.

God promised Abraham in Genesis xii.2-3: “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

Abraham showed that he believed God by his willingness to obey God and sacrifice his son, Isaac. But after Abraham, the people knew the promise, but knowing the promise of greatness to come did nothing to inspire them to be good. Perhaps it made righteousness less desirable to pursue, for virtue takes effort, and Abraham’s descendants assuredly knew that their promise was to come true.

So God gave Moses the Law to give to Israel. Israel could never completely fulfill the Law of Moses, but they had it to guide them as they became a nation out in the wilderness, through the time of the judges, and of the kings, and of the prophets. They were taught righteousness.

St. Paul says as much in Galatians iii.24: “Wherefore the law was our schoolmasterto bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” The Law was powerless to lead Israel into righteousness. Ultimately, the Law showed us how we each were condemned as being not good enough.

John Wesley speaks to this:

Will it follow from hence that the law is against, opposite to, the promises of God? By no means. They are well consistent. But yet the law cannot give life, as the promise doth. If there had been a law which could have given life – Which could have entitled a sinner to life, God would have spared his own Son, and righteousness, or justification, with all the blessings consequent upon it, would have been by that law.

Similarly, Isaac Williams says:

The Law was to convince them of sin, and bring them to Christ: thus John the Baptist preached repentance; for if they had believed Moses they would have believed in Christ. The Law was but the means, not the end; but the Jews were now making it the end; whereas the end of the Law is Christ, in Whom is the promise, and the blessing, and the covenant, and righteousness, and life; not for a time only, but for ever. It was to this the prophets of old looked,’ to this the saints of the elder covenant aspired, to behold Christ, the end of the Law, in Whom dwells the fulness of all good, the love of God flowing down from Heaven, and embracing all men; as the fragrant oil that came down on the head of Aaron, and went to the skirts of his clothing.

We are not capable in our fallen, mortal, and limited state to fulfill the Law and earn for ourselves righteousness. The mightiest hero, the holiest saint, the wisest philosopher can no more earn his own righteousness before God than the weakest of us. We all are in the same boat when it comes to deserving our own salvation.

We do not do the work of salvation – Christ does. In Acts xxvi.14, St. Paul tells his personal story of the futility of seeking to earn salvation through righteous living instead of Christ: “And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”

Indeed, when St. Paul addressed divisions in the Church, he said in 1 Corinthians iii.6: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” Christ, being God, is utterly trustworthy. We can completely depend upon Him. We do not live under the law, struggling and kicking. Each of us has our own work as members of Christ’s Body the Church, but we fool ourselves if we consider that our work is somehow necessary to the fruition of God’s work in us. Unless the Lord returns first, we shall each of us die. Not a single one of us is indispensable. Only Christ is indispensable, and we are made members of Him, and consequently into Christ’s indispensable character through faith and the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.

After all, we read in Proverbs iii.5: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” Depending upon Christ, we are not to depend upon ourselves. We are not to depend on the works of our hands.

But the works we create are not entirely worthless. We are to offer up to God the works of our hands. One of my spiritual heroes, the Cure d’Ars, St. Jean Marie Baptist Vianney, said, “All that we do without offering it to God is wasted.” Our work is important as a faithful response to Christ’s life-saving work of death and Resurrection. Thus we ought to not rely upon ourselves but place all our weight upon Christ.

And we are in no hurry. That anxious desire to hurry is a sign of brokenness, of corruption of our holy selves. Christ enjoys no anxiety. He neither races to His Passion in Jerusalem nor does He seek to avoid it.

Even our knowledge of God is imperfect. 1 Corinthians xiii.12: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” We see imperfectly today but after Christ returns we shall see Him and know Him face to face. Until then, we only have faith – we trust that He is here saving us.

Christ shows us all love. Christ exemplifies sacrificial loving-kindness because He sacrificed Himself for us because He loved us when we were unworthy of His love. The Law teaches us that we are sinners who need Christ. It is thus for us not to try to earn our salvation through the Law but to believe and trust in Christ. When we lean upon Christ for support, He supports us with His love, and we are saved through God Incarnate and not the written Law.

We are called to believe in Christ, to follow Him, and to love like He loves. We must simply and meekly love Christ and our neighbor. We trust in Him and follow Him, conforming our lives to His holy life. We need not concern ourselves with earning our reward but following Him in His way.

This journey through life is a journey following Christ, not our own conceits. We must simply and earnestly rely upon Christ. It is in this way that we are free from both the Law and from anxiety. We don’t have to earn or deserve anything. All the doing happened before you and I showed up. Calvary happened almost twenty centuries ago. Our job is to open ourselves up and follow the Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yet this does not mean that we are to be lazy and pay attention to frivolous things. This does mean that we live lives of assurance. We do not need to worry about our salvation, for Christ has already won that for us. We do not need to worry about our earthly legacy, for it will be swept away by the ravages of time and of little consequence in the afterlife. We do not need to worry about our loved ones, for the Great Physician and Lover of our Souls is looking after them far better than we ever could.

This does not mean that we give up. This means that we give in. We give in to Christ. We give in to relying upon Christ. We give in to following Christ. We give in to loving God and others like Christ first loved us.

And He even explains why. Loving-kindness. We read in St. John iii.16-17: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

“…If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.”

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“Loving our Neighbor through Good Works”

In St. Mark’s Gospel, this healing and the healing of the Syrophoenician woman which precede it together form a turning point in Christ’s ministry. This healing in particular shows the firstfruits of salvation from the Jewish Messiah which will come to the Gentiles after Pentecost. Although this miracle is done privately, it is a very inclusive miracle. Instead of healing only one of the Chosen People, Christ the Messiah heals a man from outside the Old Covenant.

Travelling with His disciples amongst the Gentiles, Jesus fulfills two Messianic prophesies. These include Isaiah xxxv.5, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped” and Ezekiel xxiv.27, “In that day shall thy mouth be opened to him which is escaped, and thou shalt speak, and be no more dumb: and thou shalt be a sign unto them; and they shall know that I am the LORD”.

God has power over hearing and speech. Exodus iv.11 reads, “And the LORD said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD?”. Christ is a Jew, but He is God Incarnate. He has power over hearing and speech.

St. Matthew 11.2-6 shows that Christ is doing the works that the Christ was prophesied to do according to the Forerunner, St. John Baptist:

2 Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples,

3 And said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?

4 Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see:

5 The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

6 And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.

31: JESUS, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis.

In this part of St. Mark’s Gospel, Christ and the disciples left the pagan region of Tyre and Sidon, the site of ancient Phoenicia and modern Lebanon, and headed back towards Judea. They stopped off in the area of the Ten Cities, the Decapolis, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. These are ten Hellenistic, or culturally Greek, cities east of Samaria and Galilee, across the River Jordan.

Christ had already healed the demoniac possessed by Legion whilst visiting there before, so His reputation probably preceded Him. According to Acts ix.2, this area was evangelized early. Decades later, some Christians fled to one of these cities from Judea during the last war between Rome and the Jews.

32: And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him.

The people of the Decapolis asked Christ to heal this man. His own people asked on his behalf. They intercede to the Son of God for his healing. The week before last, a small group of us gathered to pray for others. We’ll be doing that again in a few weeks.

Every Sunday and every Mass we lift up the names brought to us by the members of Christ’s Body here in this parish to God the Father Almighty, joining them in the mystical and eternal sacrifice of the Son to the Father in the Eucharist, the good gift. We bring those we know and love to the attention of God so that he may heal them and have mercy upon them.

The local Gentiles interceded on behalf of their deaf friend who couldn’t speak to the Messiah of Israel. They showed faith and love: Faith that Christ could heal him and love for him that he might be healed.

33a: And he took him aside from the multitude,

Privately, away from the public. This is normally used for Christ alone with His disciples.

Christ avoids making miracles in public and seeks to avoid public praise for them. He does not seek His own glory but the healing and mending of the bodies and souls of the lost.

Pseudo-Chrysostom tells that Christ took aside the man privately, “teaching us to cast away vain glory and swelling of heart, for no one can work miracles as he can, who loves humility and is lowly in his conduct.”

Indeed, pride is incompatible with thaumaturgy or wonderworking. Pride is a sin against God. God gives the good gifts which we work amongst our fellows. It is through Christ that we do good works. Sin and good works are incompatible and irreconcilable; sin and good works in Christ cannot exist together. We must give up pride and seeking after glory for ourselves or we can no longer do good works in Christ.

33b: and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue;

This seems rather vulgar and unbecoming the founder of our religion. Yet this putting his hands inside his mouth and spitting makes sense. Christ actually touched the man, showing that this world is part of God’s creation. Christ the Son of God uses his perfect fingers and sacred spittle to touch the man in ears and on tongue to heal part of creation which has fallen away from God.

34: and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.

Christ heals the man with six actions: taking aside, putting hands in the ear, spitting, touching the tongue, deep groan (“sighed”), and command of healing. This is like our liturgical action at Mass and other services such as Baptism and Confirmation. He looked up to Heaven. He said ephphathah, the Aramaic word for “be opened!” It serves as a word of power, which is not a magical incantation of superstitious nonsense. This is a direct command from God to be healed. As the earlier quote from Exodus iv.11 showed, Christ has the power of God to heal the deaf and mute.

St. Bede says that from Heaven comes all healing, which is why Christ looked up. All we can do for healing also comes down from Heaven. Whether it be our medical technology or the wise word properly delivered into the ready ear, all our help comes from our Creator and Redeemer who gives us all good things in the first place. God uses our hands like he uses the hands of Christ for the good of our fellow man.

Likewise, the good we do must not be good only in our eyes but in the eyes of God as well. Thus, we ought to always keep a healthy suspicion upon ourselves and watch ourselves to ensure that we do God’s work and not our own particular preferences.

35: And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.

“His ears were opened” literally means is ‘his hearing was opened’, referring to the act of hearing not to the thing of ears. We do hear through our ears, but the ears being restored was secondary to Christ restoring the hearing. We see that today with the new cochlear implants which do not fix the ears but restore hearing.

36: And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it;

God is now at work among the Gentiles. He has said, “be opened!” and they now hear, and proclaim, and are enthusiastic. Christ will not finish His work among the Gentiles directly; but His apostles will carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth, performing great works in His Name. God’s plan of salvation requires we sinful humans to proclaim Christ to the world.

“so much the more a great deal they published it” – published in the sense of ‘they proclaimed it’, with the religious note of proclamation. When I preach or proclaim the Gospel, I am publishing it. Think of publish glad tidings, tidings of peace! I do not publish in the manner of printing a book or magazine, but rather in proclaiming to the hearing of others personally.

It goes on, “And He charged them that they should tell no man.” Pseudo-Chrysostom: “By which He has taught us not to boast in our powers, but in the cross and humiliation.” Wherefore it goes on, “but the more He charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it.”

We ought not to seek praise for that which we do well and to praise those who do well to us. Praise is not our due; even the Son of God did not seek praise.

As for those who seek the approval of others (St. Matthew vi.1-2, 5):

1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

Christ tells us to refrain from doing our duty in public so to avoid receiving men’s praises. Christ often refrained from performing healings in public so to avoid receiving men’s praises. Both by word and example we are to serve humbly and obediently, willingly sacrificing our pride upon the Cross. Remember, we can do no good thing on our own, but only insofar as we participate in Christ.

37: and were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.

Once the people know that the man they brought forward to be healed has been healed, they get excited and pass on the news. This is not what Christ wanted. He healed the man because Christ is the Son of God come into the world to save us, and healing our bodily ailments is one portion of that salvation. Today’s healing is a foretaste of tomorrow’s incorruptible bodies.

When we follow in His way, the Way of the Cross, we ought to leave others better off for having known us. I know of many ways in which many of you have made the lives of your fellows better in this vale of suffering and tears. It is incumbent upon us to serve our fellow man, not as an end unto itself, not as a means of gaining glory for ourselves, not even as a means of gaining glory for God, but to show forth the love of Christ unto those whom He came to save, our very own neighbors.

“He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.”

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Christ’s story of the Pharisee and the publican is not a contrast between hypocrisy and humility, but between presumption and humility. The Pharisee was not a hypocrite. He genuinely believed what he was saying. He genuinely lived out the life he professed to live.

However, the Pharisee did presume to know the mind of God. The Pharisee presumed to judge with the judgement of God. And he did not know the mind of God. He wrongly judged what was worthy and what was not. And so he walked away unjustified, not set right with God.

Presumption is a form of pride. The Pharisee judged himself compared to his fellow man. That is not the true measurement of a man. The true measurement of a man is in the sight of his creator. The Pharisee’s preening missed the point of what he was attempting to do. And by being so sure he was doing what he was supposed to do, he thereby dismissed the publican who saw reality correctly; the reality that he was a sinner before a righteous God. All that a sinner before a righteous God can say is, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

As Bishop Mortimer says of the magnanimous man who judges rightly:

This is the heart of humility. He does not exalt himself, neither does he despise his fellows. He honours God, and he honors his fellows as God’s creatures. He honours every man truly in proportion as he finds him honourable in the sight of God. He rightly and properly honours and prefers good men above bad men. But he is not thereby proud, because he knows that both he and they owe what goodness they possess to God; the evil which they share with evil men is of themselves.

This is one way which the Apostle Paul does not fall into the sin of the Pharisee. St. Paul does not presume the goodness of God for himself. Instead he sees himself for who he truly is, and it is not pretty:

For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

He does not even claim the great labors for the Gospel of Christ which he has done, for they, understood rightly, are due to “grace of God which was with me.” His persecution of the Church of God is on him; his abundant labours exceeding all others are due to the God alone. St. Paul merely cooperated with the grace of God; he did not generate the grace of God.

And thus that is another way which the Apostle Paul does not fall into the sin of presumption. St. Paul does not sleep in late, eat iced cream, and count on God’s grace. St. Paul “labored more abundantly than they all:” For if thinking that your good works are due to you alone and that you can successfully work your salvation before God is wrong, so is thinking that God’s grace is coming to you no matter what you do and that you don’t need to do a thing. Both count on things which are not true, and things that are not true will do you no good before the dread judgement seat of Christ our Lord on the Day of Doom, the Day of Judgement.

So we must steer a middle course between presuming that we can work out our salvation through our shoddy works alone and presuming that we can sit back and let God work his saving magic on us. Both ways leave us unjustified. And we cannot live forever with God if we are not justified.

So how do we steer this middle course between the two ways to commit the sin of presumption? After all, the Pharisee tithed, fasted, and prayed at the Temple and still got left out. How do we live out our faith and good works in the sight of God here in Christ’s Church?

Like so many times before, we should look at Bishop Mortimer’s Six Duties of Churchmen. Worshipping, receiving Holy Communion, fasting, tithing, confessing, and remaining chaste are the bare minimum level of acceptable Christian service. My dear children, no less will do. Receiving Holy Communion, tithing, and chastity are not optional. Worshipping every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, fasting, and confessing your sins are not optional.

Yet they are not sufficient. They are the bare minimum of our Christian Duty. But we do not win Heaven by them alone. They are not enough by themselves. For without the grace of God, they are worth nothing.

They are no substitute for faith. Faith is trusting in that which is unseen. There is no behavior we can enact that makes us right with God. God makes us right with him based on our faith, which itself is a gift from God. Faith is the basis upon which we make our decisions to act in a Christian manner, and faith is the likely outcome of behaving in a Christian manner. Faith in God and good works go hand in hand.

So how did the publican get justified? He stood afar off, the lowered his eyes, he beat his chest, and he prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

This is the most needful prayer in Scripture. It is right up there with the Lord’s Prayer. In fact, this is probably more important. Like the Summary of the Law is superior to the Ten Commandments even though it is shorter, this Publican’s Prayer is short and sweet, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

We trust God when we do our best and tell the Lord that we are spent, we are through; we can do no more. And we know that what we have done is nothing without him. Knowing in faith that all our actions are insufficient for our eternal life, we turn to God and say, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” We say it knowing that it is true, that we have no hope for good, no hope for Heaven, no hope for eternal life except God the Father.

Our incomparable Anglican liturgy includes a robust confession of sins in each of the three major services of the Church, Mattins, Mass, and Evensong. If you focus during this prayer of confession, offer yourself up to it to the best of your ability, and firmly intend to turn away from your sins and do better next time, then this prayer is efficacious, it is effective in obtaining what you desire.

When we attach ourselves to Christ’s offering of Himself up as a living sacrifice to God the Father in the Holy Mass, then we participate in Christ’s death and Resurrection again. When we eat the Body of Christ and drink His holy Blood in faith, we join ourselves mystically and sacramentally into the guaranteed streams of grace pouring from the side of Christ in Heaven upon us here down on earth.

We do our good works in conjunction with our living faith in Christ, knowing that all that we have is not good enough. But we know from the Gospels that Christ came to us on His own; we did not have to beg and cajole Him down here. He saved us on the Cross before we were born. He loved us first. We can count on Him.